DFW07LA056 · Cessna 172S
Cessna 172S · Accident: on ground/water collision with object while taxiing
From Tulsa Riverside Airport (RVS) to Tulsa, OK
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW07LA056
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172S
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N159RA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tulsa Riverside Airport (RVS), Tulsa, OKTo Tulsa, OK
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Taxi
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- On ground/water collision with object
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stolen aircraft/unauthorized use, attempted
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A private pilot, who had been denied authorization by the operator to rent the airplane for a night flight, gained access to the ignition key for the single-engine airplane, and proceeded to attempt the unauthorized flight. The airplane collided with a hangar and a parked airplane while taxiing for departure. A post impact fire ensued. The pilot exited the airplane's side window unassisted and fled the accident site. Before the accident, the pilot had informed the flight school dispatcher that a flight instructor was en route to the airport to provide him with a biannual flight review. The pilot was authorized to perform a preflight inspection of the airplane while waiting for the instructor to arrive. The pilot mentioned that he wanted to start the airplane's engine to make sure it was operational. The dispatcher informed the pilot that he needed to wait until the flight instructor arrived. Unbeknown to the dispatcher, the pilot had taken the airplane's ignition key from the office. A short time later the dispatcher heard an airplane engine start followed by a "crash sound and then a loud boom or explosion." The flight instructor, with whom the pilot had reportedly talked to on the night of the accident, reported that he had not received any calls from the pilot on the evening of the accident. The day after the accident it was discovered that ignition switches in two rental airplanes parked near the accident airplane had been tampered with. The ignition switch had been pulled loose from one airplane and the other airplane's ignition switch had been removed. Reportedly the pilot committed suicide approximately two weeks later.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from a hangar and parked airplane during the unauthorized use of an airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW07LA056
- Event ID
- 20070118X00069
- Case number
- DFW07LA056
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2006-12-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ec45b2a4f626757d3e5f69905ef0c0f40783e3e8033131979151868b262745cd; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:06:44.901Z.